Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.

This new edition includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between l996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of ten books on travel and foreign affairs that have been translated into many languages. They included Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, a sequel to Balkan Ghosts, a sequel to Balkan Ghosts.

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as “the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date” (The Boston Globe), Kaplans prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.

 

This new edition includes six opinion pieces written by Kaplan about the Balkans between 1996 and 2000, beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo War, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.

"With remarkable clarity, [Kaplan] explains problems that all sides have lived with throughout the long history of the Balkan peninsula . . . Kaplan succeeds in presenting the everyday experience of different Balkan communities in a vivid and significant way. Balkan Ghosts offers the complexity, brutality, and beauty in traveling in both the past and the present."—The Seattle Times

"In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. That November, while the world danced in the rubble of the wall, a journalist named Robert Kaplan was in Kosovo watching a riot between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. The future, Kaplan wrote, was not in a reuniting Germany but in a fragmenting Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, Kaplan saw the impending collapse of nation states and the rise of a Hobbesian jungle of gang wars, tribal slaughter and ideological jihads. Kaplan, of course, was right."—Porter J. Goss, Director of Central Intelligence

 

"Important . . . Kaplan is a striking and evocative writer."—The Washington Post

 

"Mr. Kaplan spares no individual and no nation . . . as he demonstrates his literary powers at their fullest."—The New York Times Book Review

 

"Kaplan is a striking and evocative writer, and the Balkans offer him all the richness of a García Marquez world, where the fantastic is everyday life."—San Francisco Examiner

 

"With remarkable clarity, [Kaplan] explains problems that all sides have lived with throughout the long history of the Balkan peninsula . . . Kaplan succeeds in presenting the everyday experience of different Balkan communities in a vivid and significant way. Balkan Ghosts offers the complexity, brutality, and beauty in traveling in both the past and the present."—The Seattle Times

 

"An often rewarding odyssey filled with vivid writing."—The Wall Street Journal

 

"Historical perspective makes Kaplan a superb observer . . . He artfully blends his reporter's notes with rich historical reflection."—Business Week

 

"A well-documented account of the Balkan's past and present . . . Kaplan . . . forcefully illustrates that the irreconcilable differences among Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnians are only one part of the seething ethic, religious, and cultural tensions tearing at a much larger region."—Pittsburgh Post Gazette

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.

This new edition includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between l996 and 2000 beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.

"In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. That November, while the world danced in the rubble of the wall, a journalist named Robert Kaplan was in Kosovo watching a riot between ethnic Serbs and Albanians. The future, Kaplan wrote, was not in a reuniting Germany but in a fragmenting Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, Kaplan saw the impending collapse of nation states and the rise of a Hobbesian jungle of gang wars, tribal slaughter, and ideological jihads. Kaplan, of course, was right."---Porter J. Goss, Director of Central Intelligence

From the assassination that triggered World War I to the ethnic warfare in Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the twentieth century, the place where terrorism and genocide first became tools of policy. Chosen as one of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times, and greeted with critical acclaim as "the most insightful and timely work on the Balkans to date" (The Boston Globe), Kaplan's prescient, enthralling, and often chilling political travelogue is already a modern classic.

This new edition includes six opinion pieces written by Robert Kaplan about the Balkans between l996 and 2000, beginning just after the implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords and ending after the conclusion of the Kosovo war, with the removal of Slobodan Milosevic from power.

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of ten books on travel and foreign affairs translated into many languages. They included Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, a sequel to Balkan Ghosts.

Robert D. Kaplan, a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, is the author of ten books on travel and foreign affairs that have been translated into many languages. They included Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus, a sequel to Balkan Ghosts, a sequel to Balkan Ghosts.